


A Failure, A Regret

by PolarGrizz47



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, F/F, Guilt, Obsession, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PolarGrizz47/pseuds/PolarGrizz47
Summary: Moira looks upon the good doctor's dead body and lets her palm press harder against the glass, "...Because, I know I can bring you back."





	A Failure, A Regret

**Author's Note:**

> Something to practice with, the working idea is that Angela was killed during the explosion and Moira can't move on, consumed by her guilt.

_"This is it, huh? Your crowning achievement..."_

Moira does not look up from her delicate work. Each chemical had to be added precisely, or the whole experiment could be ruined.

The hauntingly familiar voice continues to admire her new laboratory. _"It's_ quite _state of the art... Everything looks so advanced... how long as it been again?"_

Her jaw sets, but Moira adds two carefully measured droplets into the reaction. It fizzles in the tube with a violent hiss, steam, and bubbles writhing in the liquid. The darkened substance turns a hopeful glowing yellow before it curdles and returns to a purplish glow.

Moira's gut clenches.

_"No, no, Moira... not like that,"_ The voice whispers, a phantom hand brushing over her arm. _"You can force life... You have to **give** it."_

"I know that, Angela," She whispers, at last, blinking her eyes rapidly to obscure the ghost that seems to cling to her like old cobwebs. She ignores the shivers that crawl over her skin as the good doctor's saddened sigh echoes behind her. "I'm trying."

_"You don't have to."_

"I must," Moira bites back, only pausing to hang her head as the voice behind her takes in a sharp, quick breath. "I'm...sorry, Angela. I'm so sorry. I should've been there -"

_"It's been years, Moira. You have to move on,"_ Angela whispers before stepping back, the sound of heels clicking against the tile and one last lingering brush of her fingertips against Moira's shoulder. _"I'm not here."_

-:-

_"I'm right here, Angela," She rushed out, pressing her palms to the worse of the bleeding. Her dual colored eyes flickered across the doctor's features - too pale, eyes glassy, blood everywhere._

_Angela will not make it._

_She knows it, but she can not accept it._

_Moira steadies herself, collects her thoughts, and pushes her hands into the wound to stem the flow. "Can you move your legs?" She asks, even if she already knows the answer. Pieces of the building are sticking through Angela like spears, bloodied rubble, and rusted remains._

_Quickly, she tears off her own lab coat and rips the already destroyed sleeve off. She stuffs the sleeve into the worst of the wound before attempting to tie it around Angela's middle. Throughout it all, she thinks that Angela should be screaming in pain, crying maybe - but she is still and shocked. It's a bad sign._

_Pausing to place her hands on either of Angela's cheeks, she steadies her head to look into her eyes. Blood runs fresh down the good doctor's nose and lips, and those wonderous blue eyes are empty, staring past Moira. Her cheeks are pale, dirtied by dust and smears of gore._

_"Alright," Moira says, more to herself than Angela. "I'm going to get you out of here."_

-:-

_"You kept a trophy?"_ Angela's voice is surprised, horrified perhaps.

Moira lurches from where she was numbly listening to the most recent medical podcast. Her eyes scan her apartment closely, wondering if perhaps Sombra was toying with her.

Even if she knows that the hacker wasn't.

Finally, her gaze lands on the polished half-halo. It still had scuffs on the armor from the fall of the base. Moira remembers digging it from the rubble with the rest of the destroyed suit, but that piece was cleaned and presented kindly on a book that Angela published. Her only finished book.

She'd read the thing cover to cover countless times. Hundreds of pages, nearly memorized.

Leaning forward, she slowly gets to her feet, staring right at that headpiece. "No. Not a trophy, Angela."

_"Why?"_ The voice breaks, a sob catching in her throat like a strangled scream.

Moira clenches her fists and wills herself to think of something else. But Angela still cries in her mind and there is still blood on her hands.

-:-

_"Angela, stay with me," Moira orders as she picks her way through the rubble, half carrying and half dragging the other doctor as she goes. Bodies and fallen debris litter the path ahead of them._

_Her head lolls, blond hair hanging in her face as Angela lets out a wheezing, bloodied cough. The excess trickles down her chin and lands on her already stained coat, her body trembling all over with the impending presence of the reaper._

_Moira knows that is over._

_But she wasn't ready for it to end like this._

-:-

_"Was it supposed to kill me?"_ The voice asks again as Moira is washing her hands in the bathroom. She sounds so sad, so betrayed.

Hesitation sinks into her and she watches the water swirl down the drain. For a moment, before she could blink, it almost ran red.

"...No, it wasn't. You were supposed to be off base when it went off," She informs, too cowardly to lift her gaze into the mirror. Too afraid to see the haunting images of a brilliant mind.

Another click of a heel, moving closer, half muted by the fluffy rug by the bathtub. _"Would you still be here if I was alive?"_  She asks it like she knows how deeply it will cut Moira, to the bone, to the quick.

Moira works her mouth and shakes her head, staring at the darkness of the drain. "I... I don't know..."

But she knows. They both do.

Angela hums in disappointment before her heels retreat and the door seems to creak on its own. Moira looks up quickly then, hoping that she imagined the bloodied lab coat trailing out of her sight. She gazes at herself in the mirror and blinks her bloodshot eyes before rubbing a palm across her features.

More sleep was in order.

-:-

_"You have to leave her," Reyes tells her while yanking on her arm. "We gotta go, now."_

_"No, she needs help," Moira snarls, slapping his touch away._

_When he instead moves to pull Angela from her grip, Moira slashes at him with a half-choked cry._

_"Don't touch her!"_

_"It's over, Moira."_

_"You don't know the power of science," Moira hisses, pulling the blonde's limp body closer to her chest protectively. "I'm taking her to the base -"_

_Reaper laughs at that, bitter and superior, a clawed gauntlet settling over Angela's white lab coat. "Nobody knows her resurrection technology. And it's all destroyed now, there's nothing left for us here but ghosts. You made sure of that, didn't you?"_

-:-

The room is too hot. Moira lays above her covers with her hands folded over her middle, staring at the fan on the ceiling as it lazily circles overhead. She begs for sleep's sweet embrace, but her mind is rattling about - clawing like a caged mouse and scratching at the walls.

Memories ooze up from her like old wounds, barely scabbed and rotted, still bleeding.

She closes her eyes and breaths out through her nose. It takes effort, but she finally wills her shoulders and neck to relax, her jaw unclenching as she rolls her head into the pillow. The fan makes a constant, airy sound and it soothes her if only a little bit.

For a moment, Moira thinks that she may be actually getting some sleep.

But then, a click of a heel echoes in her mind. She stiffens and forces her eyes to be tightly closed, ignoring the nightmare that walked this hallowed ground. Perhaps, she thinks, it was some sort of sleep paralysis that had plagued her for many nights now.

_"Moira,"_ The voice whispers, gently, lovingly. _"Are you going to head to sleep without giving me a goodnight kiss?"_ There's an edge of teasing to it, but Moira can still remember when Angela used to curl so perfectly against her side, warm and safe.

She swallows down the budding emotions that claw at her chest and throat. Fear, anger, want.

A sad sigh echoes in the room and the heels click closer, only pausing briefly and suddenly the footsteps have changed to barefeet on wooden floors. Moira knew the sound well, years ago. Angela always led with her right foot and balanced her weight away from the balls of her feet. A chill creeps up her spine, taunting and guilty.

Then, there was a dip in the bed near her left. A small disruption, both a nightmare and a dream come true.

_"Are you still on about that?_ " The voice whispers and Moira stiffens as an all too real hand caresses her side, delicate fingertips trailing over her freckled arm. _"I've forgiven you, Moira."_

The geneticist turns away from the touch and wraps her arms around herself, holding in the emotions that threaten to shatter her. She cannot open her eyes.

Facing the truth would be too cruel.

Moments of silence pass before the voice breaths in deeply and crawls closer up on the bed. A warmth settles behind Moira's back, another touch brushing over the nape of her neck, lips against fevered skin. _"You need to let me go... forgive yourself."_

"I can bring you back," Moira whispers, voice cracking as the fear of failure seizes her heart. "I.. I just need more time."

_"No...No, you need peace,"_ The voice begs, another kiss pressing into her skin.

-:-

_"Help me - Help me move her," Moira shouts, voice choking as Reaper pulls Angela's dead weight from her arms. "I'm taking her -"_

_"Fine. But if you think this is going to be supported by them, you're wrong," The man bites out, smog escaping his mask as he hisses before striding towards the transport carrier. Widowmaker was already waiting for them, her golden gaze is empty as she stares at Angela's body._

_"Why bring the doctor if she is of no use to us?" The_ huntress _asks, unblinking and predatory._

_Moira wants to throw her back into the rehabilitation chambers just to watch her struggle and scream. Her broken nails bite into the palms of her hands as she clenches her fists, eyes locking onto the uncaring gaze of Widowmaker._

_"I'll be bringing her back," Moira points a finger at Reaper, voice shushing into a whisper as he deposits the doctor's body onto their supplies, "I can do it. I can save her."_

_"Maybe she wouldn't want you to," Reaper growls, tendrils of black licking at the air as if he resonates deeply with that cutting remark._

_Moira reels at that, her jaw setting solidly and eyes narrowing, but no words can escape her. He's right, and they both know it._

_The trio stands there and_ stare _at the blonde's body, broken and mangled. A guardian angel to all those around her, Angela Zeigler dies with little fanfare and no body to bury._

-:-

Moira could not sleep.

It was no surprise that she found her way into the most sacred depths of her lab. In the darkness, a large, glowing tube sits in the middle of the area. It's filled with a sickly green liquid, thick and vicious and bubbling slowly. Floating in the containment chamber is a body, riddled with tubes to keep the nanites constantly flowing through the veins.

Miraculously, all of the wounds had been healed. Unfortunately, they all had mended too quickly, leaving horrific scars across pale skin, a testament to the dangerous wonders of nanite technology.

She rubs a hand over her eyes before approaching closer to Angela's tormented grave, the source of her nightmares - the epitome of her regret. With a shaky hand, she reaches out, fingertips brushing softly against the cooled glass.

The voice is back, louder this time, amplified by the small room, _"Why must you do this to me? To **us**?"_ She stresses, sounding agonized.

Moira looks upon the good doctor's dead body and lets her palm press harder against the glass, "...Because, I know I can bring you back."

_"Is it the right thing to do?"_ Her voice rises in anger, and then falls into a weak whisper, _"It will not fix our past..."_

Moira grits her teeth against that reality, shaking her head angrily, "It will -"

_"You lie to the both of us..."_

"-- it must," She whispers, looking up at Angela's body with mourning, her mismatched eyes taking in the greatest failure she'd ever suffered. "It was _my_ fault."

The silence drags on between the ghost that haunts her conscious and the reality of the woman before her. There was nothing left to say.

Moira kept her gaze fixated on the glass while a cool touch crawled up her spine, a far cry from the comforting warmth that Angela had once shown here. In the reflection of the tube, she could've sworn that she saw the doctor's face behind her - bloodied and bruised with loving blue eyes glazed over, lost to the cruel clutches of death.

"I'll bring you back," Moira whispers, and the reflection contorts, pained and desperate, in perfect synchronization with the geneticist's own emotions. "I promise, Angie..."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed!


End file.
